What I’m Thankful for: Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott is a recovering everything-addict formerly struggling-writer dirt-poor single mother who is now a rich and famous recovering addict and single mother. She possesses a singular concoction of astute social insight, self-deprecating humor, and neo-Christianity. She throws the covers off life’s underbelly while somehow managing to inject hope. She also writes unabashedly about her thigh fat and eating too many M&Ms.

To combat the critical voice in my head that told me I coudn’t write, I read her how-to-write book Bird by Bird, which has calmed the critical voices in a zillion other writers’ heads, giving us all permission to write “shitty first drafts.”

When my first marriage broke up and I gradually realized I had left The Terminator, I plowed through Anne’s books on grace, and having faith in impossible times. Books like this one…

This made me feel so much better about the fact that I have the Gossip Junkie app installed on my iPad, and that I spent about an hour last night surfing TMZ and Radar Online, soaking up every last tawdry detail about the fight between Halle Berry’s babydaddy and her new fiance. I became so overwrought with vicarious PTSD that I will be writing a blog post on the subject later this week.

But back to gratitude.

Today, I’m thankful for Anne Lamott.

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About the Author

I survived a bad divorce. Then I survived a REALLY bad custody battle. My ex-husband, “Prince Machiavelli,” got pretty much everything except for my sense of humor and most of my marbles. Oh, and my name isn’t actually Pauline. I write under a pseudonym because I am always in post-divorce peril and the last thing I need is for Prince to drag me back to court. Don’t you feel better about your life now?